This is what happens when flooding the zone meets Friday news dump. Two of DC’s most infamous distraction techniques came together over the last 24 hours, putting a strain on any legal analyst trying to flag and explain what’s going on.
Trump is suing the federal government to get $10 billion in taxpayer dollars over the “perfect” leaked tax records that Trump himself promised to disclose publicly. After breaching his promise and being proven a liar, he realized that he can just sue his own government. Will Attorney General Pam Bondi honor her oath to the country and tell him “no way, we’ll see you in court!”
While I haven’t checked out Polymarket yet, my guess is that the “no” contract is trading right around the Browns Super Bowl chances.
It’s not a great look for an already deeply unpopular regime. But when life gives you a lemon… directly disobey multiple federal courts finding no legal basis for a lawful arrest.
Don Lemon, in this case. Abbe Lowell released a statement on behalf of his client, announcing that federal agents had arrested the journalist in Los Angeles while he was covering the Grammy awards.
The DOJ has been trying — and spectacularly failing — to arrest Lemon for a while now. Attorney General Pam Bondi keeps tweeting about Lemon’s role in a “coordinated attack” on a January 18th service at Cities Church in St. Paul. In reality, protesters disrupted the service to call out pastor David Easterwood — who moonlights as the leader of the local ICE field office. Lemon did not participate in the protest, but did livestream the event as a journalist.
The arrest is at once shocking and completely unsurprising. Shocking because the DOJ’s attempt to contrive any legal justification to arrest Lemon already earned a thorough and absolute ass-kicking in federal court. When federal prosecutors initially sought arrest warrants for Lemon and four others, Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko took one look at their evidence and laughed them out of court, refusing to sign the warrants for lack of probable cause. Unwilling to accept this loss, the DOJ first tried to convince Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz to overrule the magistrate judge and, when he raised concerns that this would be, you know, baseless and possibly illegal, the DOJ ducked out of a scheduled hearing and tried to convince the Eighth Circuit to issue a writ of mandamus ordering the judge to issue the warrant.
The appellate panel did not issue the writ and the DOJ dropped the request. But the whole episode did give us an entertaining right-wing social media slapfight.
This should have marked the end of a troubling campaign to punish a journalist for journalisming, but what this DOJ lacks in professionalism and legal acumen they more than make up for in creativity. Unable to secure a warrant, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that she directed federal agents to arrest the journalists.
What does that mean? Who knows? Though it would suggest that the government went behind the backs of all the judges and found a grand jury willing to indict a ham sandwich (not the easiest task for them these days) based on the paucity of facts that left multiple federal judges unimpressed. As Marcy Wheeler notes, Abbe Lowell is almost certainly going to get a look at those transcripts:
Even for this administration, it’s a wild act of defiance. And defiance is the accurate term. Don’t fall for the vapid commentary from Trump’s dumbest cheerleaders:
The media aren’t reporting that dad said yes… after mom told me no!
Look, it’s one thing to go to a grand jury from jump and another to do it explicitly because multiple judges told you that you’ve shown up in court with nothing but your genitals in your hands. Grand juries enjoy considerable deference, but if there’s ever a case to yeet an indictment, it’s when the DOJ — having lost in three successive courts — takes the same thin gruel of evidence to a grand jury to snow them into accepting evidence already judicially determined to fall short of muster.
In any event, having defied the judges, agents descended on the journalists. In the case of Minnesota-based journalist Georgia Fort, masked law enforcement showed up at her door. As many have noted, a masked man knocking on the door and pretending to be a cop is exactly how Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered.
Which should prompt another conversation about what it means to the rule of law to have law enforcement running around like Temu Batman. The HBO continuation of Watchmen made a world-building point out of cops wearing masks because the very notion would signal to the audience that the setting was a dystopian and fascist hell. Now it’s every day.
Bondi later released a video claiming that these charges are about protecting the right to worship, an outrageous claim to make given that ICE has used church services as a hunting ground for months.
Meanwhile the White House exercised its traditional restraint, posting the picture of a black journalist with a chain emoji.
As a reminder, there are handcuff emojis… the White House decided to go with chains.
While all this is going on, you might have missed that the DOJ has got another grand jury cooking, and based on this subpoena, they appear to be looking into criminal charges against the Mayor of Minneapolis.
Noted bleeding heart liberal Antonin Scalia already drove a stake through the heart of this possible charge. In Printz v. United States Scalia explained the federal government cannot “commandeer” state and local law enforcement to do its bidding. The case dealt with the Brady Act’s requirement that local sheriffs conduct background checks on gun purchases, but Scalia’s reasoning was broader: states have a “residuary and inviolable sovereignty” and the feds can’t just “impress into its service… the police officers of the 50 States.” There’s a whole lot of James Madison cheerleading about protecting against tyranny, but the point is local law enforcement doesn’t have to give ICE jack squat.
Even for an administration committed to distraction, this seems like a lot to drop in one day. It’s almost as though there might be more to this…
That’s Deputy AG Todd Blanche, taking the stage to announce the release of the Epstein files! Several weeks late and several pages short. The release withholds tons of material, which Blanche brushes off as irrelevant… trust us! As the above clip suggests, he also suggests that the release will do what it can to hide the names of the abusers.
That has not gone to plan…
Do these people have the vaguest clue how discovery works? They can’t even distract without calling attention to their own distractions.
It’s so much to wade through. And that’s the point. Every one of these stories deserved full treatment from a legal publication, but there simply aren’t enough hours in the day or writers on staff. It makes this such a grueling end of week fire drill.
Don’t they understand we all just want to finish up our day and go see MELANIA like everyone else?!?
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
The post It’s ‘Flood The Zone Friday’ As DOJ Arrests Black Journalists Under KKK Act, Probes Criminal Charges For Minneapolis, And Drops (A Sliver Of) The Epstein Files appeared first on Above the Law.
This is what happens when flooding the zone meets Friday news dump. Two of DC’s most infamous distraction techniques came together over the last 24 hours, putting a strain on any legal analyst trying to flag and explain what’s going on.
Trump is suing the federal government to get $10 billion in taxpayer dollars over the “perfect” leaked tax records that Trump himself promised to disclose publicly. After breaching his promise and being proven a liar, he realized that he can just sue his own government. Will Attorney General Pam Bondi honor her oath to the country and tell him “no way, we’ll see you in court!”
While I haven’t checked out Polymarket yet, my guess is that the “no” contract is trading right around the Browns Super Bowl chances.
It’s not a great look for an already deeply unpopular regime. But when life gives you a lemon… directly disobey multiple federal courts finding no legal basis for a lawful arrest.
Don Lemon, in this case. Abbe Lowell released a statement on behalf of his client, announcing that federal agents had arrested the journalist in Los Angeles while he was covering the Grammy awards.
The DOJ has been trying — and spectacularly failing — to arrest Lemon for a while now. Attorney General Pam Bondi keeps tweeting about Lemon’s role in a “coordinated attack” on a January 18th service at Cities Church in St. Paul. In reality, protesters disrupted the service to call out pastor David Easterwood — who moonlights as the leader of the local ICE field office. Lemon did not participate in the protest, but did livestream the event as a journalist.
The arrest is at once shocking and completely unsurprising. Shocking because the DOJ’s attempt to contrive any legal justification to arrest Lemon already earned a thorough and absolute ass-kicking in federal court. When federal prosecutors initially sought arrest warrants for Lemon and four others, Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko took one look at their evidence and laughed them out of court, refusing to sign the warrants for lack of probable cause. Unwilling to accept this loss, the DOJ first tried to convince Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz to overrule the magistrate judge and, when he raised concerns that this would be, you know, baseless and possibly illegal, the DOJ ducked out of a scheduled hearing and tried to convince the Eighth Circuit to issue a writ of mandamus ordering the judge to issue the warrant.
The appellate panel did not issue the writ and the DOJ dropped the request. But the whole episode did give us an entertaining right-wing social media slapfight.
This should have marked the end of a troubling campaign to punish a journalist for journalisming, but what this DOJ lacks in professionalism and legal acumen they more than make up for in creativity. Unable to secure a warrant, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that she directed federal agents to arrest the journalists.
What does that mean? Who knows? Though it would suggest that the government went behind the backs of all the judges and found a grand jury willing to indict a ham sandwich (not the easiest task for them these days) based on the paucity of facts that left multiple federal judges unimpressed. As Marcy Wheeler notes, Abbe Lowell is almost certainly going to get a look at those transcripts:
Even for this administration, it’s a wild act of defiance. And defiance is the accurate term. Don’t fall for the vapid commentary from Trump’s dumbest cheerleaders:
The media aren’t reporting that dad said yes… after mom told me no!
Look, it’s one thing to go to a grand jury from jump and another to do it explicitly because multiple judges told you that you’ve shown up in court with nothing but your genitals in your hands. Grand juries enjoy considerable deference, but if there’s ever a case to yeet an indictment, it’s when the DOJ — having lost in three successive courts — takes the same thin gruel of evidence to a grand jury to snow them into accepting evidence already judicially determined to fall short of muster.
In any event, having defied the judges, agents descended on the journalists. In the case of Minnesota-based journalist Georgia Fort, masked law enforcement showed up at her door. As many have noted, a masked man knocking on the door and pretending to be a cop is exactly how Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered.
Which should prompt another conversation about what it means to the rule of law to have law enforcement running around like Temu Batman. The HBO continuation of Watchmen made a world-building point out of cops wearing masks because the very notion would signal to the audience that the setting was a dystopian and fascist hell. Now it’s every day.
Bondi later released a video claiming that these charges are about protecting the right to worship, an outrageous claim to make given that ICE has used church services as a hunting ground for months.
Meanwhile the White House exercised its traditional restraint, posting the picture of a black journalist with a chain emoji.
As a reminder, there are handcuff emojis… the White House decided to go with chains.
While all this is going on, you might have missed that the DOJ has got another grand jury cooking, and based on this subpoena, they appear to be looking into criminal charges against the Mayor of Minneapolis.
Noted bleeding heart liberal Antonin Scalia already drove a stake through the heart of this possible charge. In Printz v. United States Scalia explained the federal government cannot “commandeer” state and local law enforcement to do its bidding. The case dealt with the Brady Act’s requirement that local sheriffs conduct background checks on gun purchases, but Scalia’s reasoning was broader: states have a “residuary and inviolable sovereignty” and the feds can’t just “impress into its service… the police officers of the 50 States.” There’s a whole lot of James Madison cheerleading about protecting against tyranny, but the point is local law enforcement doesn’t have to give ICE jack squat.
Even for an administration committed to distraction, this seems like a lot to drop in one day. It’s almost as though there might be more to this…
That’s Deputy AG Todd Blanche, taking the stage to announce the release of the Epstein files! Several weeks late and several pages short. The release withholds tons of material, which Blanche brushes off as irrelevant… trust us! As the above clip suggests, he also suggests that the release will do what it can to hide the names of the abusers.
That has not gone to plan…
Do these people have the vaguest clue how discovery works? They can’t even distract without calling attention to their own distractions.
It’s so much to wade through. And that’s the point. Every one of these stories deserved full treatment from a legal publication, but there simply aren’t enough hours in the day or writers on staff. It makes this such a grueling end of week fire drill.
Don’t they understand we all just want to finish up our day and go see MELANIA like everyone else?!?
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
The post It’s ‘Flood The Zone Friday’ As DOJ Arrests Black Journalists Under KKK Act, Probes Criminal Charges For Minneapolis, And Drops (A Sliver Of) The Epstein Files appeared first on Above the Law.
